Film and Episodic Content Discussion Thread

Discussion in 'Random Thoughts' started by purr1n, Jan 8, 2020.

  1. Pharmaboy

    Pharmaboy Friend

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    Just finished Netflix' THE KILLER INSIDE: THE MIND OF AARON HERNANDEZ. I knew the facts in the case, yet was unprepared for this well-done, horrifying documentary.

    Many things are horrifying here--most of all, not knowing what drove this talented, charismatic man to coldblooded murder of 3 people (& an attempt to kill at least one other). There were reasons galore, but no explanation.

    This production is very well done. The story told is purposefully non-linear (no mere recitation of facts here), and the approach works well. The use of a graphic timeline as guide & metaphor for Hernandez' descent into criminality was very effective.

    The narration deserves kudos. Rather than employ a voice-of-god narrator, most of the narration is provided by participants in this tale; their commentary & attempts to make sense it all help move each episode along in an organic way. The result is that this information doesn't feel "curated" or inexorably directed to the final resolution...wise, since there is no resolution here. Death without resolution.

    Props to the film-maker for giving more weight to the victims here than I saw in any print stories or press reports to date. All 3 victims seem like nice, well meaning people, worth knowing on their own grounds. None seem to qualify in the least for the destruction he rained down on them.

    Watching this documentary was no fun, but I strongly recommend it.
     
    Last edited: Jun 10, 2020
  2. ColtMrFire

    ColtMrFire Writes better fan fics than you

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    The first in my "Better Than You Remember" series, highlighting films I feel didn't get enough love upon release, and deserve revisiting. New videos every Wednesday at 12 noon Central Time. Subscribe to Cine-mechanic for all the latest.

    The Faculty

     
  3. M3NTAL

    M3NTAL Friend

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    Looking forward to your BTYR series. Been enjoying the videos so-far.
     
  4. ColtMrFire

    ColtMrFire Writes better fan fics than you

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    Thank you! Glad you're enjoying cause I enjoy making them!
     
  5. Pharmaboy

    Pharmaboy Friend

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    I agree with every point. This film had any number of things that set it apart. It was well directed, extremely visual, way more intelligent than almost all horror I'd seen involving teen participants to that point. It's no mistake that a number of these actors went on to do excellent work later. My favorite is Joshn Hartnett in SIN CITY, LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN--and one of my favorite horror films ever, 30 DAYS OF NIGHT.

    I also appreciated that the teacher roles weren't routinely despicable, poorly written adult charicatures. Jon Stewart, Bebe Neuwirth, and especially Piper Laurie (extremely creepy here, and no stranger to great horror films) stood out for me.

    I really wish director Rodriguez would do more, bigger budget horror. He clearly has something to say in this genre where relatively few uber-creative writers & directors toil.
     
  6. ColtMrFire

    ColtMrFire Writes better fan fics than you

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    The Faculty is definitely one of, if not his best film. Rodriguez is a weird one where he is very DIY and likes to tinker in his own garage. As a result I feel like he can get stuck in his own bubble a bit. He seems to excel with other people's superior ideas, and his energy combined with Williamson's wit and the well written script was a perfect match. Same with Tarantino and Dusk Til Dawn. Same with Frank Miller and Sin City... RR really needs to step out of his wheelhouse more often.
     
  7. Pharmaboy

    Pharmaboy Friend

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    Just finished another mindfuck documentary on Netflix: DON'T F**K WITH CATS. I never saw anything quite like it before. There are multiple, novel & disturbing levels at play here:
    • A core group of concerned Facebook & Internet devotees who react to a series of snuff videos posted by an unknown person
    • Those videos start out involving cats, and progress to murder of a human
    • The person identified by the group (following months of collaboration & 'net forensics) is clearly aware that he has been identified--and seems to welcome it, if not also be triggered/instigated by it
    • After the human murder, police in various countries (some of whom had been explicitly warned about the perpetrator by the Facebook group--but ignored the warnings) become belatedly involved in an international manhunt for the killer
    • The killer shows himself to be one of the most perverse, deviant, psychopathic, clever, diabolical murderers ever...truly a character out of a Hitchcock film or Edgar Allen Poe story
    This documentary is very well done. There's no slack-time and "filler" here: it's taut, tense, propulsive. The use of multiple narrators (not a "voice-of-god" narrator) pays off, as the material never feels "curated" or schemed out.

    The director deserves a lot of credit for the creative/effective use of video footage that's too distressing for most people to directly view. Clips of the videos are shown in magnified, distorted, excerpted ways that don't directly show the deaths (I still had to avert my eyes). On occasion people from the Facebook group and the police sob on camera, terribly upset by what they've seen.

    The whole thing is dark as hell & shows some a truly awful side of humanity. But it also shows how concerned, like-minded people can collaborate & improvise tactics to redress terrible wrongs. Strongly recommended.
     
    Last edited: Jun 25, 2020
  8. ColtMrFire

    ColtMrFire Writes better fan fics than you

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    In challenging times, art can act as a beacon of hope. Strange thing to say about such a dark, brutal thriller like Seven, but the film has more up its sleeve than just depravity and a head in a box. It is a parable about the human condition, and in my latest video, I examine why.

    New videos every Wednesday at 12 noon Central time.

     
  9. Psalmanazar

    Psalmanazar Most improved member; A+

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    Normal People sucks. The couple is cute and a couple of the sex scenes are decent but the show stinks. It’s about how poor white men without real jobs oppress rich the old fashioned way white women who also don’t work real jobs and that’s bad according to Karl Marx. For this ridiculous show, a woman who desires a sexually fulfilling relationship is immoral and that white men should not work real jobs so that they can be poor like everyone else.

    Normal People isn’t Secretary. There’s nothing funny or positive about it. It isn’t the Before Sunset movies. The characters are boring losers who deserve to end up poor and lonely. It’s a shitty millennial soap opera meets communist fable for people who think grabbing a tit is rough sex. The refusal of the male lead to engage in sadomasochism or domestic abuse let’s him enter a quaint socialist workers’ paradise where nobody works. The book is dumb, the author is dumb, and the show is dumb. I’m going to go watch Species now. At least that’s dumb fun with naked people.
     
    Last edited: Jun 19, 2020
  10. ColtMrFire

    ColtMrFire Writes better fan fics than you

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    Haven't posted a scene breakdown in a while and this is my most extensive one yet. Had alot of fun putting it together. If you're a fan of Jurassic Park, this is a must watch.

    New video every Wednesday at 12 noon Central Time. Subscribe for all the latest.

     
  11. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    While Disney / Marvel is sitting on their ass, HBO-Warner / DC is already into its second season of Doom Patrol. Now before anyone exclaims, not another superhero genre, Doom Patrol is anything but. I don't know how well versed in comics people here are - Doom Patrol is this: Take the X-Men, and turn them into a bunch of freak losers with serious problems. (The first run of Doom Patrol comics ended up with the group making a conscious decision to die so that the inhabitants of a town could be saved.)

    In fact, X-Men is a rip-off of Doom Patrol (because that's what Stan Lee does - he takes other people's stuff, rips it off, or takes credit for it.) Instead of Charles Francis Xavier / Professor X, we have Niles Cauder, a guy who may not be so benevolent after all (don't know if the show will follow the comics). Instead of mutants who are part of a school with a super jet, we have outcasts with serious psychological problems who cannot control their powers and are usually at each others' throats, in a school bus.

    I'm in the middle of season one. The show starts off well enough, struggles to find its footing (or maybe it's me), and seems to hit its stride later on. The focus is on the characters (taken from the early and late Doom Patrol comics) and not upon action packed struggles against a super villain with god-like powers. Well, there is that, but it serves as the backdrop, not necessarily part of the plot. Like the comics, the show is weird. Expect stuff like a street to be sentient, eyeballs in the sky, and Animal Vegetable Mineral Man (who happens to kind of look like Jude)

    [​IMG]

    Available on HBO Max. This could be a problem because the morons at HBO-Warner couldn't secure a deal with Roku and the Amazon Bald Guy Villain is being a dick by not allowing the HBO Max app on FireTV, but rather insisting HBO Max be available via the Amazon Prime portal.
     
    Last edited: Jun 25, 2020
  12. zerodeefex

    zerodeefex SBAF's Imelda Marcos

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    I binged season 1 over the last 2 weeks. Watchmen and Doom Patrol are literally the only two superhero shows I've enjoyed in my life. I can definitely +1 the recommendation.

    And I literally thought the same thing about Steve Larson. Did a double take when he was first on screen.
     
  13. Pogo

    Pogo Friend

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    The Death of Stalin, 2017 release. It's on Netflix.
    Steve Buscemi as Kruschev with a Brooklyn accent? Yes please!
    A hilarious black comedy about one of the greatest mass murderers and systems In human history.
     
  14. ColtMrFire

    ColtMrFire Writes better fan fics than you

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    In my latest video I explore the shocking parallels between the computer dream world of The Matrix and our social media.
    New video every Wednesday at 12 noon Central time.

     
  15. Pharmaboy

    Pharmaboy Friend

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    I missed this video--just seeing it now. I remember this film as an acid bath of soiled realism (reality always being socially & psychologically negotiable)...dark & horrifying. Movies like this are a gut check for one who loves "dark" cinema; where the script says, "Go ahead, choke on this darkness."

    Your explication of the text is compelling. I badly need to see this film again. I want to see how it aligns to your commentary--also to see if my own aging process since 1st seeing it changes it for me. This one goes on the list, along with another classic of darkness, TAXI DRIVER.
     
  16. Pharmaboy

    Pharmaboy Friend

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    Another excellent video. Breaking down scenes in this manner helps us understand the non-verbal, sensory elements of cinema--which, deployed with creativity & flair, operate on the viewer's feelings.

    To your praise of Speilberg's technical skills I would add these comments:
    • He uses light (often large/bright light) as well as any director ever
    • His direction is heartfelt, rooted in emotion & appreciation of humanity. I detect zero irony or post-modern snark in his work
    • And though he's not a director of horror/slasher films, he continually comes up with ingenious visual analogues of fear & trepidation, the water glass on the dash being just one of many examples
     
  17. ColtMrFire

    ColtMrFire Writes better fan fics than you

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    While, he's not a director of horror per se, he did make one of the best horror movies of all time (Jaws). And I'd argue one of the best horror movies of the 80s (Poltergeist)... Tobe Hooper was credited, but Spielberg was the puppet master on that movie.
     
  18. Pharmaboy

    Pharmaboy Friend

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    That's true. Both films scared the shit of many people. How about Spielberg's 1st film, DUEL? It was terrifying, with a screenplay by one of our great horror/fantasy writers, Richard Matheson. The "crazed/anonymous trucker" popped up in many later films...

    Compared to many horror films of their time, JAWS & POLTERGEIST are heartfelt, filled with richly drawn characters, notably lacking in cruelty or sadism. I find Spielberg's compassion for his characters to be striking, definitive.

    CLOSE ENCOUNTERS was anything but horror, but here, too, compassion was evident in this tale of people doing compulsive, "crazy" things (remember Richard Dreyfuss in his torn-up surburban house, sleepless, sculpting the mountain?). In other hands these characters might have been castigated & incarcerated, perhaps even with "snake pit" scenes in mental hospitals. Spielberg never makes such choices: instead he portrays his characters as driven & recruited--compelled by mysterious forces.
     
  19. ColtMrFire

    ColtMrFire Writes better fan fics than you

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    The second of my "Better Than You Remember" series. This film is an incredible piece of pop art that I feel never got the love it deserved. And it's your only chance to see Fred Savage as a junkie!

    New video every Wednesday at 12 noon Central time.

     
  20. gixxerwimp

    gixxerwimp Professional tricycle rider

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    That's where I am now. It's pretty good, and a nice change of pace from the Marvel fare.

     

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